14 Colo. 65 | Colo. | 1890
delivered the opinion of the court.
The answer filed in the cause was stricken out as a sham answer, and judgment thereupon entered for the plaintiff for the amount claimed in the complaint. Should such action of the court be sustained?
Whether the pleading was objectionable for other reasons than the one urged is not material. Appellee’s motion was based solely upon the claim that the answer was a sham one. That part of the code relating to sham answers reads as follows: “Sham and irrelevant answers and defenses, and so much of' any pleading as may be irrelevant, redundant, immaterial, or insufficient, may be stricken out upon motion, and upon such terms as the court, in its discretion, may impose.” Sec. 61.
“Sham pleading,” as defined by Chitty, is the pleading of a matter known by the party to be false, for the purpose of delay or other unworthy object. 1 Chit. PL 567. Bliss, in his work upon Code Pleadings, says that a “sham pleading” is one good in form and false in fact. Sec. 422. In Bouvier’s Law Dictionary a “sham plea ” is said to be one entered for the mere purpose of delay, concerning a matter which the pleader knows to be false. It will be seen, from these definitions, that the essential element of a sham plea is its falsity; and yet it is evident that not every false plea can be stricken out upon motion supported by affidavit, as this would be to substitute a trial to the court upon affidavits for a jury trial. An examination of decided cases shows that the courts have not adopted any uniform rule in reference to the nature of answers that may be stricken out upon motion as sham.
In Brown v. Lewis, 10 Ind. 232, it was decided that “if an answer is valid on its face, and no facts exist
In California a plea of payment to a suit upon a promissory note was stricken out by the trial court upon affidavits showing the falsity of such plea, and the ntalafides of the defendants in pleading it, and such action was sustained upon appeal. Gostorfs v. Taafe, 18 Cal. 386. In People v. McCumber, 18 N. Y. 315, a defense consisting of denials of knowledge or information sufficient to form a belief as to several matters, and a qualified denial in direct terms of another allegation of the complaint, was stricken out as sham, the court holding that a defense otherwise good may, if false, be stricken out as sham, although duly verified, and this may now be considered as the general practice in New York. See Corbett v. Eno, 13 Abb. Pr. 65. So, also, in Minnesota it has been repeatedly held that a sham answer, although verified, may be stricken out upon proof of its falsity. Hayward v. Grant, 13 Minn. 165 (Gil. 154); Barker v. Foster, 29 Minn. 166; Lumber Co. v. Richardson, 31 Minn. 267.
In Torrence v. Strong, 4 Or. 39, it was decided that an answer good in form, and containing facts sufficient to constitute a defense, cannot be gotten rid of by demurrer, but that it may be stricken out as false. Tharin v. Seabrook, 6 S. C. 113, is- authority for saying that objection to sham defenses, ordinarily presents a question of fact to be determined on affidavits. If an answer is manifestly false, it may be stricken out as sham, although this power should be sparingly used, and only in cases free from doubt. It is the policy of the code “to
It requires no argument to show that the affidavit of defendant in support of his answer in this case does not amount to an affidavit of merits. It does not deny the execution of the note. On the contrary, the due execution thereof is admitted under the pleadings, a copy of the note appearing in the complaint, and the answer
The judgment of the court below is accordingly affirmed.
Affirmed.